Instructors
Note: Our course instructors are subject to change.
Eric Anderson
Eric is a research molecular geneticist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Santa Cruz, CA, and a research associate in the Institute of Marine Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz. Eric develops and applies statistical and computational methods for inference from population genetic data. Most methods are directly relevant to management and conservation. His work has focused on Monte Carlo methods for efficient calculation of likelihoods from genetic models, Bayesian methods, computations on the coalescent process, application of hidden Markov models and graphical models to genetics, and inference in finite mixture models. He has recently been involved in developing methods for multigenerational pedigree inference using SNPs, deriving and using multiallelic "microhaplotype" marker data from next generation sequencing of amplicons, and large-scale pairwise relationship inference for close-kin mark-recapture.
Ellie Armstrong
Ellie is an assistant professor at UC Riverside. She worked in the Petrov and Hadly labs at Stanford University. She primarily focuses on the genomics of large carnivores and how we can improve genomic resources and build low-impact monitoring techniques for these species. She is experienced in both short- and long-read genome assembly methods across diverse taxa and whole-genome resequencing methods. She is particularly interested in the dynamics of small populations and how common population genetic estimates such as heterozygosity reflect population health, adaptive potential, and extinction risk. She co-leads California and international projects assembling genomes and teaching assembly.
Niek Barmentlo
Niek is an evolutionary geneticist who focuses on understanding contemporary evolutionary drivers affecting susceptibility of wild species to disease. His current research is part of a large international collaboration using eco-evolutionary approaches to study the susceptibility of European wild boar to African Swine Fever. He uses genomic data to test for selection signatures and identify candidate genes for disease resistance and adaption in domestic and wild species. In addition, his research tries to understand the effect of population bottlenecks on immune gene diversity, and the subsequent effect of reduced genetic diversity on immune traits.
Matt DeSaix
Matt is a population geneticist whose research focuses on expanding the conservation genomics toolbox for addressing wildlife conservation and management. To that end, he uses empirical and simulation-based approaches to understand population genetic processes in wild populations and develops corresponding software. In recent years he focused on developing population assignment tests for use with genotype likelihood data from low-coverage whole genome sequencing and applying these methods to understanding avian migratory patterns. He is currently involved in research applied to invasive wild pig management that includes detecting translocated individuals, characterizing admixed ancestry, and identifying informative markers for African Swine Fever preparedness and response. He completed his PhD in the Ruegg Lab at Colorado State University. Currently, he is an ORISE Fellow with the USDA-APHIS National Veterinary Services Laboratories and works out of the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Brenna Forester
Brenna is a landscape and molecular ecologist focused on conserving biodiversity in a period of rapid global change. Her research integrates environmental, genomic, and phenotypic data sets to assess adaptive capacity and inform the management of threatened species. Her current research areas include integrating genomic data into listing frameworks under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and conservation genomics of imperiled amphibians. She completed her MSc at Western Washington University, her PhD at Duke University, and a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship at Colorado State University. She is currently an Endangered Species Biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in the Branch of Species Status Assessment Science Support.
Chris Funk
The Funk Lab strives to understand the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that generate and maintain biodiversity, and how rapid global environmental change affects these processes. We address questions by integrating population genomics, quantitative field methods, controlled experiments, and computational analysis in a variety of taxonomic groups (amphibians, fish, stream insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, and terrestrial insects). Much of our research focuses on freshwater habitats, such as streams, rivers, ponds, wetlands, and lakes. In addition to my interest in basic questions in evolution and ecology, an important part of my research program applies population genetic theory and next-generation sequencing data to address conservation questions. Population genetics and genomics are invaluable in conservation and management for the delineation of conservation units, determining patterns of genetic connectivity across landscapes, and assessing the status and viability of threatened species. A major focus of my research program is the application of population genetics and genomics to address critical questions for biodiversity conservation.
William Hemstrom
Will is a recent Ecology PhD graduate from UC Davis. His research focuses on the genetics of migration in Monarch Butterflies and other species and on improving and developing methods for estimating the genetic architecture of quantitative traits in order to better predict the demographic impacts of ecological changes on populations. He also has an interest in developing user-friendly software for population genetics in order to make the genetic toolkit more easily accessible for ecologists and conservationists.
Paul Hohenlohe
Paul A. Hohenlohe is an associate professor at the University of Idaho in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies. Research in his group focuses on population genetics and genomics in a wide range of systems with applications to conservation. He has been involved in developing analysis methods and applications for RAD sequencing, and ongoing research also uses techniques such as sequence capture and whole-genome sequencing. Current projects include the genomics of disease resistance in Tasmanian devils and island foxes; admixture and adaptation in pygmy rabbits, red wolves, and tamarisk leaf beetles; and adaptive capacity and local adaptation in scrub jays, redband trout, and sagebrush.
Marty Kardos
Marty Kardos is a research molecular geneticist with the National Marine Fisheries Service at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. He uses empirical and simulation-based approaches to understand evolution and population dynamics in the wild. Kardos' current work focuses on using genomic analyses of marine mammals and marine and anadromous fishes, with the ultimate goal of informing resource management and conservation. He is particularly interested in using genomic approaches to understand inbreeding depression, historical population size, hybridization, and their fitness consequences, and the intersection of adaptive potential and population dynamics.
Joanna Kelley
Joanna Kelley is a professor of Evolutionary and Population Genomics in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC). She is also Associate Director of the Institute for Marine Science at UCSC. Her research interests include understanding how populations diverge and adapt to different environments, using comparative genomics and functional genomics, including single cell and bulk RNA-sequencing. She also uses statistical and genomic approaches to characterize specific genes and pathways that underlie adaptive change.
Schuyler Liphardt
After getting his PhD at the University of New Mexico in 2021, Schuyler became a postdoc in the Good and Cheviron labs at the University of Montana. His PhD work focused on using genetics to reconstruct the history of the movement of viruses through mammalian hosts, and he has also published papers on small mammal phylogeography and biodiversity. Schuyler's research interests include viral evolution, mammalian adaptation and speciation, museum science, and high performance research computing.
Yer Lor
Content coming soon
Gordon Luikart
Gordon Luikart is a professor at the Flathead Lake Biological Station (University of Montana). He was a Research Scientist with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and a Professor at the University of Porto (and CIBIO) Portugal. His research focuses on the development and application of molecular and computational approaches to understand the genetic basis of fitness, adaptation, connectivity, the spread of invasive species/pathogens, and the conservation of wild and domestic animals. He co-authored the book entitled Conservation and the Genomics of Populations, with Fred Allendorf, Chris Funk, Sally Aitken, and Margaret Byrne.
Bruce Rannala
Bruce's research group focuses on mathematical, statistical and computational aspects of population genomics, phylogenetic inference, and bioinformatics. Topics of current research include algorithms and methods for identifying recent hybrids and migrant individuals, inferring phylogenetic trees in the presence of introgression and ongoing gene flow between populations and methods for estimating rates of introduction and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between countries and regions using genomic sequence data. A unifying theme of research in the group is the application of analytic theory and computer simulation to address questions of importance in evolutionary biology and human genetics.
Rena Schweizer
Rena Schweizer is a broadly-trained wildlife conservation geneticist. In her research, Rena integrates genomics, population genetics, bioinformatics, and physiology to evaluate the conservation status of wildlife populations and study evolution. During previous work, Rena has implemented a variety of approaches to understand genetic substructure and natural selection in gray wolves, high-altitude adaptation and ecophysiology in deer mice, and thermal acclimation in black-capped chickadees. Rena is currently a Research Entomologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service Pollinating Insects Research Unit, where she is working on conservation genomics of U.S. native bees.
Arun Sethuraman
Dr. Sethuraman is an evolutionary computational biologist who develops new statistical methods to study how genomes evolve in structured populations during divergence and speciation in response to natural selection and demography. Applications of his work include conservation, deciphering human evolutionary history, agriculture, and biological control. Outside the lab, he loves CrossFit and spoiling his two cats, Calvin and Pepper.
Steve Spear
Content coming soon
Gregg Thomas
Gregg is a Bioinformatics Scientst at Harvard Univeristy. He got his PhD in Evolutionary Biology and Bioinformatics at Indiana University. His main research interests center around how changes in DNA sequences play a role in adaptation. He uses genomics and phylogenetics to understand the patterns and drivers of molecular evolution in a comparative framework, and he works through some of the problems in these analyses that come with vast amounts of genomic data. To this end, he has worked on modeling mutation rate variation in mammals, detecting convergent evolution using genomic data, and analyzing gene families in a number of species, including leading the comparative portion of the i5K project. He develops software to analyze biological data, including GRAMPA which aids in the study of polyploidy by using gene tree topologies, and Referee which annotates genome assemblies with quality scores, and he contributed to the latest version of CAFE to account for error in gene family analysis.
Robin Waples
Robin Waples is an Affiliate Professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington and Emeritus Senior Scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. At NMFS, Robin led the Conservation Biology Division for a decade, conducting comprehensive reviews of the status of Pacific salmonids under the US federal Endangered Species Act. Research interests include: adapting standard population genetics theory so that it can be applied to real-world problems; combining diverse types of information (molecular genetics; life history; ecology) to characterize hierarchical levels of diversity in Pacific salmon; assessing the viability of complex conservation units that include multiple independent populations and diverse ecotypes; methods for analyzing gene flow and population structure; evolutionary consequences of anthropogenic changes to natural habitats; patterns of reproductive success across space and time; effects of age structure on calculation and estimation of effective population size.